Washington Post Bullshido

After several hours of punching, kicking and disarming imagined attackers, two longtime airline pilots practiced what their instructors called an extremely effective technique to defend an airplane against a terrorist: eye-gouging.

The pilots and instructors lunged at each other and pretended to rake their fingernails down an assailant's face to inflict the maximum damage and possibly pop out an eyeball.

"It doesn't matter how big or how muscle-bound they are," instructor Shawn H. German told the pilots during a recent day-long training session in Alexandria. "If you get them in the eye, they are going to go down."

To be fair, the Washington Post is at least careful enough to point out that the instructors are the ones saying eye-gouging is "extremely effective."

Great. Makes me feel much safer about our homeland security. Not only are pilots not even showing up for self-defense classes, but they're being taught Teh DEDLIE I-GOUGE!!!11one

We're screwed.

Also, got a little McDojo thrown in:

Officials said they also plan to pass out more brochures and put up posters in airports to promote the classes, which cost the agency about $300 per participant.

If all you have is one afternoon to learn self defense, I wouldn't object to that being taught. It's better than nothing. I'd also imagine it's more likely to be effective than one afternoon of kickboxing or judo or whatever.

Teach the flight attendants to pull guard and wrap them up in the aisles from there other attendants and passengers can bludgeon the son of a bitch from all sides or simply pull him off.

Real advances are being made in armor these days including bullet proof fabrics; offer up a few million dollars to whoever can come up with lightweight comfortable fabrics that will ressist cuts from box cutters, razor blades, other sharpened items, etc.

Something they're just not looking at when it comes to airline security is that the hijackers will always be grossly outnumbered, if the cew is taught to take command of the situation- not gouge the fucking eyes- and can deal witht he pressure it could very well get the more capable passengers to step up.

This is of course all assuming that the hijackers don't manage to get a machine gun or obvious bomb on the plane, just saying.... box cutters for god's sake there's no reason that should ever happen again.

Kevlar/Spectra type fabrics already somewhat work against cutting, within reason, and you can buy clothing for that purpose, especially gloves.

BUT it's guaranteed that if your defense is to wear or use a given armor or tool, rather than training yourself to DO SOMETHING to stop your attacker, someone will come up with a way around it.

Nobody's mentioned it much, but most of the stabbing "shivs" you see made in prison from plastic objects could be made in an airliner's bathroom, if you had something abrasive. Soft armor would not stop anything pointy enough to get the point between the woven threads no matter how strong the threads are.

Good point Stick. Really, the airline folks need to train to take command and enlist help in situations like that. I think self-defense training is a good idea, but it should be tailored. For example, why are they, as shown in the picture in that story, training in a friggin gym?

They should be training in confined spaces like an airplane model or mock-up. Most likely, I'd see it turn into a clinchfight with such an environment, which is where their training should focus. Clinching and grappling, even though it's unlikely there'd be much room to fully grapple on the floor of an airplane. Still, chokes would work well to disable a potential threat.

This is one instance, that, *gasp* I could see a little (A LITTLE) wing chun theory/application might come in use since there's only forward and back and no one's going to be generating much haymaker power. An overwhelming, straightforward deer-punching flurry to clinch to takedown and choke. That's the ticket.

If all you have is one afternoon to learn self defense, I wouldn't object to that being taught. It's better than nothing. I'd also imagine it's more likely to be effective than one afternoon of kickboxing or judo or whatever.

I agree with this fully. If you've only got an afternoon, go the gouge